On the Eve of the Elections to the Fourth Duma

Published:Rabochaya GazetaNo. 9, July 30 (August 12), 1912.

      Published according to the text inRabochaya Gazeta.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1975],

      Moscow,Volume 18,

      pages237-241.Translated:Stepan ApresyanTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Onthe eve of the elections the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party has come forward, despite cruel persecution, despite wholesale
arrests, with a clearer, more distinct and more precise programme, tactics
and platform than any other party.

InJanuary 1912 the All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. summed up
the results of the ideological and political work carried out by the Party
in the grim years of the counter-revolution. The Conference decisions gave
answers to all the pressing questions of the movement. Thanks to those
decisions, the election platform was simply a final statement. The platform
was published by the Central Committee in Russia and was then reprinted by
a whole series of local
organisations.[1]The whole bourgeois press reported the Conference and
published some of its decisions.

Inthe six months since the Conference, work has been going on through
the Party press and dozens of reports, in hundreds of speeches in factory
groups and at the meetings held in April and May, to explain the Conference
decisions and to put them into effect. The Party’s slogans—a republic, an
eight-hour working day, confiscation of the landed estates—have spread
throughout Russia and have been accepted by the foremost proletarians. The
revolutionary upsurge of the masses, its expression ranging from strikes
and meetings to revolts in the armed forces, has proved these slogans to be
correct and vital.

OurParty has already made use of the elections, and very extensively
too. No amount of “interpretation” by the police, no amount of
falsification of the Fourth Duma (by the priesthood or otherwise) can
nullifythisresult. Propaganda,organised strictly on Party lines, has already been carried out everywhere
and hasset the tonefor the entire election campaign of the
Social-Democrats.

Thebourgeois parties in a hasty, slapdash manner are writing
“platformsforthe elections”, for promises, for hoodwinking the
voters: The liquidators, too, who are trailing behind the liberals, are now
devising alegal“platformforthe elections”. The
liquidators are making a fuss about platforms in the legal, censored press
as they prepare to cover up their utter confusion, disorganisation, and
lack of ideological principle, with a respectable, law-abiding “platform
for the elections”.

Nota platform “for the elections”, but elections to implement therevolutionary Social-Democraticplatform!—that is how the Party
of the working class sees it. We have already used the elections to this
end, and will use them to the hilt. We will use even the most reactionary
tsarist Duma to advocate the revolutionary platform, tactics and programme
of the Russian S.D. Labour Party. Truly valuable are only those platforms
that complete the long work ofrevolutionaryagitation, which has
already givenfullanswers toallthe questions of the
movement, and not those platforms (particularly the legal ones!) that are
composed in all haste as a stop-gap and as a noisy advertisement, as in the
case of the liquidators.

Sixmonths have passed since the Party re-established
itself. Overcoming incredible difficulties, suffering from fierce
persecution and experiencing breaks in the work of this or that local
centre or of the common centre—the Central Committee—the Party is
definitely going forward, extending its work and its influence among the
masses. This extension of the work is taking placein a new form:
in addition to the illegal nuclei, which are secret and narrow, and better
disguised than before, there is broader legal Marxist propaganda. It is
just this distinctive character of the new preparations for revolution in
the new conditions that has long been noted and acknowledged by the Party.

Andwe can now give a full answer to the noisy utterances of the
liquidators, who threaten us with “duplicate candidates”. Empty threats
that scare no one! The liquidators are so badly beaten and impotent thatno amount of helpcan revive them. They cannot so much as think of putting up “duplicate
candidates”; if they did so, they would win a pitiful, ludicrously
insignificant number of votes. They know this and will not try the
experiment. They are making a noise merely to divert attention and conceal
the truth.

Wesaid “no amount of help”. The liquidators are counting on help
from abroad. Their friends—particularly the Letts, the Bund, and
Trotsky—have announced the convocation often“centres,
organisations and factions”! Don’t laugh! The world abroad is rich, great
and bountiful. As many as “ten centres”!! The methods used in this case
are the same as with the government in the Fourth Duma: preparations for
setting up a representative body, and the conversion of a number of ciphers
into the semblance of “big numbers”. First of all, Trotsky (in Russia he
is a cipher, he is only a contributor toZhivoye Dyelo, and his
agents are only defenders of the liquidators’ “initiating
groups”). Secondly,Golos Sotsial-Demokrata, i.e., the selfsame
impotent liquidators. Thirdly, the “Caucasian Regional Committee”, also a
cipher, in a third garb. Fourthly, the “Organising Committee”—a fourth
garb of thevery sameliquidators. Fifthly and sixthly, the Letts
and the Bund, which is wholly liquidationist today. But enough!

Needlessto say our Party is laughing at this game of non entities
abroad. They cannot resuscitate a corpse, for the liquidators in Russia are
a corpse.

Hereare the facts.

Forsix months the liquidators andalltheir friends have been
waging a desperate struggle against the Party. There exists a legalMarxistpress. It is fearfully handicapped, and does not dare
utter a word about a republic, our Party, uprising, or the tsar’s gang. It
would be simply ridiculous to think of advocating the slogans of the
R.S.D.L.P. through that press.

Butthe worker in Russia is no longer what he used to be. He has become
a force. He has paved a way for himself. He hashis ownpress,
which is handicapped but belongs to him and defends Marxismtheoretically.

Inthis open arena, everyone can see the “successes” of the
liquidators’ struggle against the anti-liquidators.
S. V.[2]ofVperyodhas already pointed out those successes in Trotsky’s
Vienna, liquidationist,Pravda. The fact is, he wrote, that the
workers’collectionsgo almost entirely to the
anti-liquidators. But he sought to comfort himself, saying that it is not
because the workers sympathise with the “Leninists”.

Why,naturally “not because”, dear friend of the liquidators!

Butstill, look at the facts.

Sixmonths of open struggle for aworkers’daily
newspaper.

Theliquidators have been shouting about it since 1910. What about
their success? In six months—from January 1 to July 1, 1912—their
papers,Zhivoye DyeloandNevsky Golos, carried the
accounts of 15 (fifteen) collections made by groups of workers for
a workers’ daily newspaper! Fifteen groups of workers in six months!

Takethe newspapers of the anti-liquidators. See their accounts of the
collections made for a workers’ daily during the same six-month period. Add
up the number of collections by groups of workers. You will find that there
were 504contributions by workers’groups!

Hereare exact monthly data for the various parts of Russia:

Theliquidators have been thoroughly beaten in the eyes of the workers’
groups in Russia. The liquidators are a corpse, and no number of terrible
(oh, how terrible!) “associations of groups, centres, factions, trends and
tendencies” abroad can revive this corpse.

Noshrill manifestos abroad and no fake conferences between
“initiating groups” and the liquidators can undo or alleviate this
complete defeat of the liquidators in the eyes ofhundreds of
workers’groups in Russia.

Theunity of the election campaign of the worker Social-Democrats in
Russia isassured. It is assured not through “agreements” with
the liquidators, but through the complete victory over the liquidators, who
have already been reduced to their true role, the role of liberal
intellectuals. See how well Savin, the Socialist-Revolutionary liquidator,
fits intoNasha Zarya. See how warmly
L. M.[3]praises, inListok Golosa Sotsial-Demokrata, “the
initiative” of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who repeatedly stray
(because of an otzovist hangover!) into liquidationism. Ponder on the
significance of the fact that the same sheet holds up the well-known
Socialist-Revolutionary “leader”, Avksentyev, as an example for
Plekhanov. Remember howallliquidators kiss the
non-Social-Democratic Left wing of the Polish Socialist Party. Liquidators
of all parties, unite!

Everyonefinds his niche in the end. Groups of intellectualist
liquidators from among former Marxists and former liberals with a bomb are
being welded together by the course of events.

Asfor the Party of the working class, the R.S.D.L.P., it has, in the
six months since it regained its freedom from the bondage of those who had
liquidated it, made a huge stride forward, as can be seen from the facts
cited.

[1]“TheElection Platform of the R.S.D.L.P.” was written by
Lenin in Paris at the beginning of March 1912. The election platform was
endorsed by the Central Committee and published in Russia (Tiflis) in
leaflet form on behalf of the C.C. The leaflet was delivered to eighteen
localities,, including the largest proletarian centres. The election
platform, reprinted from the leaflet published in Russia,appeared as a supplement toSotsial-DemokratNo. 26. It
constituted a militant policy document calling for a struggle for the
revolution. Lenin attached special importance to the election platform of
the Party and exposed the liquidators’ attempts to put forward a legal,
opportunist platform “for the elections”.

Insending toZvezdaa copy made from the leaflet “The
Election Platform of the R.S.D.L.P.”, Lenin marked it as follows:

“This platform is being sent only for theinformation of all,
particularly thecompilersof the platform. It is time tocease writingplatforms when there alreadyexistsone
confirmed and published by the Central Committee. (A leaflethas
already been issuedabout this in Russia, but as we possess onlyonecopy, we cannot, send it, but are sending you a hand-written
copy.)”

[2]S.V.—Stanislav Volsky, pseudonym of A. V. Sokolov, one of
the organisers of theVperyodgroup.

[3]L.M.—L. Martov, one of the Menshevik leaders.